Taking a stand

Waterloo Region Record

Re: It’s starting to look like 1995 all over again — Dec. 12

Only a few weeks ago, Record columnist Luisa D’Amato was apologizing in print to teachers for statements that generated angry letters. It seems that this columnist did not learn from experience. Her Dec. 12 column was again inflammatory and out-of-line.

She notes that 2010 statistics indicate that teachers in general were “earning way, way more than the average family” and follows this with her wonderment that “teachers — the people who have so much — are fighting so hard to take even more from the people who have less.”

Teachers do make significantly more than the average family. This is because it takes way, way more education than average to teach and the job is way, way harder. And the two-month summer “holiday” merely allows most teachers enough time to heal their brain and body sufficiently to “go back at it” the next fall, so please, don’t beat us with that old club. Teachers are finally well paid and this fight is not about money.

I did this job for 30 years and lived through almost continual fighting about working conditions. Not being able to do the completely voluntary, non-mandatory parts of our jobs — sports, clubs, extra help, marking, lesson preparations and the like — was truly awful. There was no way you could teach effectively. Kids suffered, so did good teachers.

Over my three decade career (1972-2003) we fought hard, understanding that a teacher’s working conditions are a student’s learning conditions. Now these relatively good conditions are being stripped away — not only in teaching but across Canada as a whole as right-wing forces erode the union movement.

Instead of complaining, be glad that teachers are fighting back now. You, your child or grandchild might have a half-decent job in future because teachers are standing their ground now.